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MOUNT GILEAD, Ohio — A week after the shooting that almost left him dead, Brandon Moore already had forgiven the man who tried to kill him.

He had to.

Lying in a bed at Grant Medical Center in October 2010, after Shane Roush fired his assault rifle at the Morrow County deputy sheriff in an attempt to hide his massive marijuana operation, Moore felt himself getting bitter and angry. He had nightmares involving dark, hooded figures hovering around his bed. Friends and family could see he was sinking into a depression.

“I had to stop and deal with it, or it would have overcome me,” he said.

So the man who had initially been drawn to the ministry prayed about it. He made the choice to forgive Roush, just days after the shooting. Instantly, he felt relief. The dark figures disappeared. He started sleeping better.

“It’s like carrying a couple 5-gallon buckets of water for a mile,” he said, “and handing them off to someone a whole lot stronger than yourself.”

Yes, his friends and family all told him in the days after the shooting, he’d get back to work. But honestly, privately, his wife, his parents, the sheriff — they all had doubts. And even if Moore did make it back, it probably would be a job shuffling papers on light duty, with none of the adrenaline the 34-year-old had loved about his job.

His injuries were severe: a bone-pulverizing shot to the leg, and other shots to the chest, foot and groin. It took 15 surgeries, skin grafts and cadaver bone to stitch him back together. His left leg is about an inch-and-a-half shorter than his right, and his toes are fused together.

Doctors told him it’d be two or three years, at least, before he’d get back to any semblance of his old life and the work he’d done for a decade.

“That felt like a life sentence right there,” Moore said.

But 20 months later, he’s blown away that prognosis.

Moore has been back at the sheriff’s office since March, enduring a few weeks of hated desk duty before getting his doctor’s appointment moved up so he could get cleared to return to work as a detective, investigating burglaries in the rural county of nearly 35,000 about 50 miles north of Columbus.

Those who know him chalk it up to his determination, his quiet focus and his faith.

“I knew if there was a shot (to get back to work), he’d be the one to make it,” said Diandra Moore, who has known her husband since the sixth grade. “He’s bullheaded.”

Moore says it’s just what he had to do, the same as on that afternoon of Oct. 21.

Moore’s actions have been well-recounted. By any measure, they’re astounding. Outgunned and badly wounded, he was able to take down Roush, who had come out with body armor and an assault rifle and fired on his three neighbors and the deputy. Literally holding himself together, Moore used his belt as a tourniquet on his leg and called his wife to tell her he loved her before being flown to the hospital.

Roush, 40, is serving a 25-year prison sentence in Toledo after pleading guilty to attempted murder in August. On Friday, Moore and his family sat in the front row of a federal courtroom in Columbus and listened as Roush was sentenced to 25 years, to be served concurrently, on a federal drug conviction. Roush spoke in court and apologized to Moore for the first time. He said he prays for the family every day.Moore has been showered with awards: the National Sheriffs’ Association’s Deputy Sheriff of the Year, the Law Enforcement Congressional Badge of Bravery, the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association’s medal of honor. Most recently, he went to Washington, D.C., with his wife and two boys, 11-year-old Alec and 9-year-old Andrew, to receive the America’s Most Wanted All-Star Award.

Moore isn’t any more special or better trained than any of the other deputies in the office, Sheriff Steven Brenneman said. Some other power was with him on that day, the sheriff maintains. That’s the only explanation. “I think he was placed there by the Lord and protected and saved for a purpose,” Brenneman said. “To survive what he survived, to respond in the way he responded, to the accuracy of his shooting from the distance he shot with the injuries he had, it should have never happened.

“There was another force there aiming that weapon and protecting him,” Brenneman said.

The shooting changed Moore. He’s more assertive, his family says, more confident and self-assured. And he’s taken on a new role: public speaker to law-enforcement groups across the country. In presentations about the shooting, he stresses the importance of being vigilant, of avoiding the complacency that can settle in an officer patrolling a sleepy town or county.

“I want to change that in a positive way,” he said. “By learning from what I did wrong that day.”< /p>

Wear your bulletproof vest, carry your radio and keep extra ammunition on your belt at all times, Moore emphasizes to groups of hundreds and sometimes thousands. Even his dad, a 23-year veteran of the Mansfield Police Department, said he handles calls differently now.

“He’s found an audience, and God has given him a voice,” said Cory Schnuerer, pastor of North Woodbury Alliance Church in northern Morrow County.

Moore still thinks about the shooting every day. It’s hard not to when just stepping out of bed: He’s lopsided because of the shot that shattered his femur. But, although frustrated by his body’s new limitations, he’s not angry.

“To sit there and hold a grudge,” he said, “is not only contrary to my faith, it also takes me down a road of bitterness I don’t want to go down.”